I suspect they're right - if you start in the middle of the map - you're fucked!!

C.

in a lot of ways this makes sense as the terrs on the edge can only be attacked from 1 side - whereas in the middle you have to protect multiple flanks.

Don't now why people on here don't like being cooks, remember under siege: A former SEAL, now cook, is the only person who can stop a gang of terrorists when they sieze control of a US Navy battleship.

Even if bryguy meant that sarcastically I agree. All the effects of every territory or collection of territories ever only applies it's effect at the start of your turn. This is painfully obvious through play. Why would the victory condition be different?

It's be like making a legend with continent bonus values and being forced to put "received at start of turn".

*gasp* We need to hurry and touch up all the released maps so they say that. How else would you know!? Oh my god, how could we have missed it!?

in theory all the castles should have an equal chance to win the game.
to be honest i never played the map and i probably never will because of the country names using numbers. i always missdeploy or attack stupid things when numbers are involved. same goes for siege. i'll never play that again.

anyway back on track. from the stats coleman put it's clear the barbarians the realm of might and the rebels are in a disadvantage. since i didn't play the map i'm not sure that's the case, perhaps it's a mere coincidence that crappy players started with those locations and they didn't know what to do.
or perhaps it's truly an imbalance. to be honest i don't give a rusty nickel on balance. the drop is random so fight with what you are given. sometimes you'll be lucky sometimes not but since the vast majority of people are concerned with equal chances perhaps after a few more games there should be some reconsideration regarding the neutral values of some terits, to further balance the map.

“In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested.”- Michio Kaku

so what if realm of might or barbarians are a bad start? the guy that starts with 3 terits in australia isn't advantaged? or the many times i have screwy deployments with 5 terits in asia? is classic poorly designed? no. in my opinion not all maps should be perfectly balanced and actually perfect ballance can be achieved only on a symmetrical map and only with conquest gameplay.
let's say chinese checkers where each player starts with a tip of the star. that's perfect balance but perfect balance = crappy gameplay.

“In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested.”- Michio Kaku